Below you will find some thoughts about the impact of Blockchain technology in agriculture and food supply chain related to several existing projects and initiatives, overall implications, challenges and potential of Blockchain technology enhanced by relevant semantics and standards on support of different agri-food categories/concepts/terms.

“The UN reports that around 50% of crop value vanishes between harvesting and the point of sale… The solution: Immutable record keeping… with the help of Blockchain technology” (The Building Blocks for better value chains, CTA blog)

There is no central administrator or centralized data storage. Such a ledger keeps transparent/open views (e.g. data owner) on each transaction, which would define a concrete block within the entire chain.

EACH TRANSACTION is …

... recorded in such a decentralized ledger, which is replicated across the chain participants. Once a transaction is recorded, using cryptographic techniques, it cannot be modified. Thus, traceability and provenance are often associated with this technology model. Blockchain provides a way for participants, - for example in the farm-to-fork relationship, to access and contribute to a tamper-proof historical record of transactions regarding a food product, yielding food quality and fair cost/payment narratives, and easier counterfeit detection.

BLOCKCHAIN and a TRANSPARENT AGRICULTURE & FOOD SUPPLY CHAIN

Agriculture and food supply chains are well interlinked, since the products of agriculture almost always are used as inputs in some multi-actor (farmers, shipping companies, distributors, and groceries) distributed supply chain, where the consumer is usually the final client. Thus, Blockchain has the potential to provide answers to a number of issues in agriculture, from farmer IDs to smart contracts, from traceability and improving certification, digital payments, insurance, consumer feedback and improved logistics. For example, to improve traceability in agriculture value chains, a decentralized digital ledger can help connect inputs, suppliers, producers and buyers.

It is with this in mind, we can say that Blockchain is a promising technology towards a transparent supply chain of food, with a number of ongoing initiatives (e.g., AgriDigital that executed the world’s first settlement of the sale of tons of grain on a Blockchain) in various food products and food-related issues.

Blockchain shares similar principles with Open Data such as the promotion of transparency, equality in information knowledge and access, as well as the reorganisation of data exchange between a number of parties. Blockchain can be very useful to help overcome organisational and technological boundaries among entities that want to achieve automated data exchange. Since Blockchain provides strong data security and is highly resilient against cyber-attacks, both these qualities are desirable in open data platforms because they build a foundation of trust in the data. To dive deeper, take a look at 'Open Data and Blockchain: a match made in heaven?' (European Data Portal)

Even though Blockchain is a promising technology towards a transparent agri-food supply chain, many barriers and challenges still exist, which hinder its wider popularity among farmers and systems. These challenges involve capacity development, policies, regulatory frameworks, technical and…

If you would like to learn more about several Blockchain technology initiatives/projects in the agri-food sector (and beyond) and related opportunities and challenges linked to semantics, data management and trust, you might be also interested in taking a look at: